Senator Seeks Examples Of EPA Efforts To 'Crucify' Businesses, Wants To Document Abuses Of Power

Sen. James Inhofe says he wants to document how many companies have been “run out of business” by the types of heavy-handed EPA intimidation tactics symbolized by a regional director’s stated goal to “crucify them.”

In my talk with Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) today regarding the “crucify them” philosophy espoused on-camera by Environment Protection Agency Region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz, the senator said that this type of EPA mentality – and action – has been intimidating and threatening businesses for years.

Inhofe: “Way back in 1994, the president of a lumber company in Tulsa called me up and said, ‘I’m really sorry to tell you, but the EPA has just put me out of business.’ And I said what’d you do wrong? He said, ‘Well, I don’t think we did anything wrong. We’ve been selling are used crank case oil to the same contractors as licensed by the city and the state and the federal government for years and years.’ But, they traced some of that to a site that was a (Superfund) site. And so they are now going to put it - they’ve said we’re going to fine you $5,000 a day.’”

The expense of the fine would’ve put the company out of business, if the owner hadn’t contacted him, Inhofe said:

“And, the guy, the president of the company, said ‘I can only last thirty days.’ If he hadn’t called me, he’d be out of business today.”

But, even though these types of EPA threats are nothing new, they’ve become so severe and frequent today that they’re destroying America’s employment base, Inhofe says:

“So, this is something that has happened in the past. However, now it’s happening at a level that is just unbearable and unforgivable in terms of destroying our base - our employment base in this country.”

Sen. Inhofe says he wants to document and quantify examples of businesses the have been run out of business by unjust EPA persecution, in order to ensure that all businesses are treated more fairly in the future:

“We can prevent this from happening again. We can also, perhaps, find out how many other companies went through the same thing and just threw in the towel.

“I would like to quantify the amount of-of production, exploration and development that we would have had if they had not been overbearing and perhaps they were just run out of business.”

Once the public is aware of his effort to document examples of EPA mistreatment of American businesses, Americans will come forward to tell their stories, Sen. Inhofe says:

“Well, I don’t think it’d be very difficult for you to get examples.

“I think when people read about this and know that we want this information, I think people will come forward.”